Joseph Kirkpatrick was born in County Down Ireland in 1819. When he came to this country, he settled in Pittsburgh. 

At age 55, he made a radical change and moved with his family from Pittsburgh to the Marquette County community of Palmer. Joseph’s motives for moving from Pittsburgh were mixed. Heavy industry had expanded in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County and he opposed higher taxes. Palmer and Negaunee may have been similar to Newtownards, the city of his youth.

His family consisted of his wife, Isabella, age 45, and his children, William, 21; Joseph, 19; Margaret, 17; James, 11; John Clark, 9; and twins Allen and Euphemia, 6.

In the fall of 1874, he had come into possession of a bankrupt iron ore mining business on the Marquette Range called the Cascade Company. Under Joseph’s very able and efficient management, the Cascade was made to pay all its debts and absorbed the lands of the Lake Superior Mining. The trade name of the new business was the Pittsburgh and Lake Superior Iron Company. Joseph served as the general agent and manager.

The business extracted iron ore and shipped it by rail to Pittsburgh for refining. It was a very large enterprise that owned 22,000 acres of land, with farming and lumbering on the surface and open pit mining or underground mining, depending on the ore. Joseph erected a water-powered sawmill to produce lumber, which he used to build dwellings for his workers in Palmer.

Joseph Kirkpatrick was a religious man. In his church work, he was devout, sincere and constant. He donated a substantial amount of money and land to build a church for the community, but this was short-lived and it became the Methodist Church. The Finnish Church also received a donation of property from Kirkpatrick.

He built a Presbyterian church in Negaunee on the corner of Case Street and Pioneer Avenue. The school district built the Manual Training building on that corner when the church was demolished.

Although Joseph Kirkpatrick was a wealthy man, he ran a small store in Palmer. It was a reminder to him of how he started out in Pittsburgh, working in a store.

Kirkpatrick was not only strong in mining affairs, but in political and community affairs. He served on the township board and school board. In the Richmond Township elections of November 1894, there were 90 votes cast. All Republicans except one. Republican Joseph Kirkpatrick said he has been looking over and through all the specs to find the one black sheep ever since the vote was announced, but is unable to find him. So he concluded that some one of the 90 made a mistake on his ticket. (Iron Herald) 

“The brick house,” as it was called, was constructed for Kirkpatrick by the Pittsburgh and Lake Superior Company at a cost of $25,000. The furnishings included items made of marble that were imported from Italy. After it was vacated, actually abandoned, local youngsters called it the haunted house. It was demolished in 1929.

Joseph Kirkpatrick died in 1902 at the age of 81. His obituary was titled, “Another Pioneer Gone.” He was temporarily buried in Palmer with instructions that when his wife died they would both be buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. His wife died in 1904.

Joseph Kirkpatrick’s legacy was the Palmer School named after him and Kirkpatrick Avenue in Palmer.